ers, and they play with a persistency and
absorbed interest such as the most inveterate bridge-player could
scarcely emulate. They often play for the greater part of the day and
half the night, and generally for stakes of some sort, however small.

Nor does even robbing the god involve the idea that the god has power
to take revenge, because some of the village boys have told me, as a
huge joke, of their exploits in robbing their idol of the offerings
made to it. People bring small gifts of money, or fruit, or
sweetmeats, and deposit them near the idol. These are the recognised
perquisites of the custodian of the temple. But in the case of a
village temple this official is often also engaged in secular
business, so that the boys watch their opportunity and, in his
absence, appropriate the offering before he returns.

Apparently burial in a river is a seemly way of disposing of a god. A
man was anxious to sell us a plot of land in a certain village, but
there was on it a very primitive temple, fenced in with a few sticks
and stones. Within this enclosure were several shapeless stone gods,
painted with vermilion. We said that if we bought the site the temple
would have to be removed first. The man replied that there would be no
difficulty about that, because the gods could be buried in the river.
The god is then supposed to leave the stone and pass out into the
sacred stream. The mud figures of the god _Gunpatti_, which people
annually enshrine in their houses for ten days, are then taken in
procession to the river and placed in the water, where, of course,
they quickly dissolve.

That even the word _God_ has for Hindus an entirely different
significance to that which it has for us, indicates how hopelessly
misleading our theological expressions may be in the mouths of
English-speaking Hindus. A small party of Hindus called at the Mission
bungalow to make a request on behalf of a friend who lived in one of
the native states. They affirmed that it was an impossibility to get
justice in a law-court in one of these states, except through the
intervention of the British Resident. They therefore asked me for a
letter of introduction to this official, with a request that justice
might be done them. The fact that I did not know the Resident, or the
applicant, or any of the facts of the case did not appear to them to
be an obstacle to my granting them their petition.

So hoping to attain their end by ingratiating themselves w